Migrations: Version Control for Your Database

Migrations allow you to define database structure in code and keep it versioned.

Create a migration

php artisan make:migration create_posts_table

Example migration

public function up(): void {
  Schema::create('posts', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->id();
    $table->string('title');
    $table->text('body');
    $table->timestamps();
  });
}

public function down(): void {
  Schema::dropIfExists('posts');
}

Run migrations

php artisan migrate

Migration flow

flowchart TD
  A[Migration file] --> B[php artisan migrate]
  B --> C[(Database tables)]

In the next tutorial, we will work with Eloquent models to interact with this data.